What Is Tutor LMS? A Complete Guide for 2026
What Tutor LMS is, what the free plugin includes, what Tutor LMS Pro adds, how it stores your data and who it suits, explained by developers who work with it every day.
Checked against the plugin source: Tutor LMS 4.1.3, Tutor LMS Pro 4.1.3
Tutor LMS is a learning management system (LMS) plugin for WordPress. It turns a WordPress site into a platform where you can create courses, teach them, test students with quizzes, sell access and track progress. It is developed by Themeum and comes in two parts: a free plugin, Tutor LMS, available from WordPress.org, and a paid add-on plugin, Tutor LMS Pro.
This guide explains what Tutor LMS does, what changed in version 4, what you get for free and what needs Pro, and how the plugin works underneath. Everything here was checked against the source code of Tutor LMS 4.1.3 and Tutor LMS Pro 4.1.3.
What Tutor LMS does
At its core, Tutor LMS adds four things to WordPress:
- Course content. Courses are organized into topics, and each topic holds lessons, quizzes and (with Pro) assignments and live classes. You build them in a visual course builder.
- Learners and instructors. Students register, enroll and learn in a dedicated learning area. Instructors get their own dashboard, can create courses and, if you allow it, earn a share of sales.
- Selling. Courses can be free or paid. Tutor LMS has its own eCommerce engine with a cart, checkout, coupons and tax, and it also works with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Tracking. Lesson completion, course progress, quiz attempts and results are recorded for every student.
What is new in Tutor LMS 4
Tutor LMS 4.0 was released in July 2026 and changed a lot of what students see. The main changes:
- A redesigned student learning area with an app-like mobile experience.
- Three learning modes, set under Settings > Design: Modern, Kids (a playful, colorful interface) and Legacy.
- Light, dark and automatic themes, plus accessibility options for students such as font size, high contrast, color-vision filters and reduced motion.
- Five new quiz question types in Pro: Image Marking, Pin, Graph, Puzzle and Range. These are not available in Legacy mode.
- A resource center for downloads and a unified discussion and Q&A area.
- New student and instructor dashboards, with a switch between the two views.
- GDPR features, including consent records.
- In Pro: lesson notes, certificate verification, a live lesson hub, a course calendar and bundle expiry.
If you read tutorials written for Tutor LMS 2.x or 3.x, keep these changes in mind. Screens and some template files are different.
Free plugin vs Tutor LMS Pro
The free plugin is a complete LMS for many sites. Pro adds advanced teaching tools, more ways to sell and more integrations. Here is the short version; our Free vs Pro comparison goes into detail.
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Course builder, topics, lessons, video lessons | Yes | Yes |
| Quiz question types | 5 | 15 |
| Q&A, reviews, announcements, wishlist | Yes | Yes |
| Native cart, checkout, coupons, tax, PayPal, manual payments | Yes | Yes |
| WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads selling | Yes | Yes |
| Instructor revenue sharing and withdrawals | Yes | Yes |
| Stripe, Razorpay, Paystack, Mollie, Authorize.Net, Klarna | No | Yes |
| Subscriptions, course bundles, gift courses | No | Yes |
| Assignments, Gradebook, content drip, prerequisites | No | Yes |
| Certificates | No | Yes |
| Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom, H5P, BuddyPress, WPML | No | Yes |
| REST API | Read endpoints | Read and write endpoints |
| AI Studio, Content Bank, import and export tools | No | Yes |
Tutor LMS Pro is a separate plugin that needs the free plugin installed, at least at the version Pro was built for. Themeum recommends keeping both on the same version. If the free plugin is older than Pro expects, Pro shows a warning and its features do not load until you update it. Our guide to updating Tutor LMS safely covers this.
How Tutor LMS works under the hood
You do not need to know this to use Tutor LMS, but it explains a lot of its behavior and is essential if you plan to customize it.
Content is stored as WordPress posts
Courses use the post type courses, topics use topics, lessons use lesson, quizzes use tutor_quiz and assignments use tutor_assignments. Topics are children of a course, and lessons, quizzes and assignments are children of a topic. Courses have two taxonomies, course-category and course-tag. Course details such as level, benefits and requirements are post meta.
Enrollments are posts too
When a student enrolls, Tutor LMS creates a post of type tutor_enrolled with the student as author and the course as parent. Its status is completed for a free course or a paid one that has been paid for, and pending while payment is outstanding. We explain this in how enrollment works in Tutor LMS.
Progress is user meta and comments
Each completed lesson is saved as user meta with a key that starts with _tutor_completed_lesson_id_. A completed course is recorded as a WordPress comment of type course_completed.
Quizzes and orders have their own tables
Quiz questions, answers, attempts and attempt answers live in custom tables such as tutor_quiz_attempts. Native eCommerce adds tables for orders, order items, coupons, carts and customers, and instructor revenue sharing uses tutor_earnings and tutor_withdraws. Our developer guide lists them all.
Everything can be extended
Tutor LMS calls hundreds of action and filter hooks as it works, so developers can change its behavior without editing the plugin. Its templates can be overridden from a theme, and it has a REST API under the tutor/v1 namespace.
Who Tutor LMS is for
- Course creators who want to sell courses on their own site instead of a hosted platform. See Tutor LMS for course creators.
- Online academies and marketplaces with several instructors who share revenue.
- Schools and colleges that want teachers to build courses and grade assignments.
- Companies training employees or customers, often combined with single sign-on and reporting.
- Coaching institutes running timed test series and live classes.
It suits teams that are comfortable running a WordPress site, or that have help to do so. If you want a fully hosted service with no maintenance at all, a SaaS platform may suit you better; our comparison of Tutor LMS vs Teachable and Thinkific explains the trade-off.
What you need to run Tutor LMS
- WordPress 5.3 or newer (version 4.1.3 is tested up to WordPress 7.1).
- PHP 7.4 or newer. We recommend a current PHP 8 version.
- Hosting suited to logged-in users. Students are logged in, so their pages cannot be served from a simple page cache. See hosting for Tutor LMS.
- A theme that works well with Tutor LMS pages.
Getting started
- Install Tutor LMS and run the setup wizard.
- Review the settings, especially monetization and design.
- Create your first course and add topics and lessons.
- Decide how you will sell.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tutor LMS free?
The core Tutor LMS plugin is free and open source (GPL). Tutor LMS Pro is a paid plugin that adds advanced features.
Can Tutor LMS sell courses without WooCommerce?
Yes. Tutor LMS has its own eCommerce engine with a cart, checkout, coupons, tax and PayPal in the free plugin. Pro adds more payment gateways. You can still choose WooCommerce if you prefer it.
Does Tutor LMS work with any WordPress theme?
It works with most themes, because it renders its own templates for course, lesson and dashboard pages. Themes built with Tutor LMS in mind look more consistent and need fewer adjustments.
Can I move from another LMS to Tutor LMS?
Yes, but courses, students and progress need to be mapped to the way Tutor LMS stores them. See our migration service or our guides for specific platforms.
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I’m Vishavjeet Choubey, an Enterprise LMS Architect with 10+ years of experience helping businesses, coaches, universities, and online academies build and scale powerful digital learning platforms. I specialize in enterprise LMS architecture, WordPress, WooCommerce, LifterLMS, LearnDash, Moodle, custom plugin development, and AI-driven automation. I build scalable LMS platforms, high-converting eCommerce solutions, and custom WordPress applications designed to improve user experiences, streamline operations, and drive measurable business growth. My approach combines deep WordPress and LMS engineering expertise with modern AI automation to reduce manual work, improve efficiency, and help organizations launch, scale, and grow faster.
